


Living Without

by cerise



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-10
Updated: 2006-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 11:16:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerise/pseuds/cerise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan picks up an irritating habit, and Weevil can't figure out why he keeps on letting him do it. The first part of this is a series of missing scenes from S2's "The Rapes of Graff."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living Without

The thing to keep in mind about Logan Echolls was that he liked to talk. If you could get past that – and that was harder than Weevil had first estimated – if you could get past the fact that he never shut the hell up, even when it was for his own good, the guy was almost all right. Almost.

Except that he often felt like talking in the middle of a night, blowing up his phone when Weevil had already been sleeping, in which case he wasn't all right at all, but _absolutely_ a dead man in the morning. And the worst part was how he wouldn't even call to talk about anything important, just shoot the shit about some teacher that had gotten on his nerves or his blinding gay eyesore of a car or asking what his _abuela_ had made for dinner and how come she never cooked like that when she worked for him and how much better Logan guessed his room service meal was or _whatever_.

It didn't take very long for Weevil to give up cussing at him every time he called. Didn't even bother hanging up after a while, either. It wasn't like it ever stopped him from calling back, 'cause that was just how Logan Echolls operated. It was like he didn't need you to like him; he just needed to get his own way. Weevil didn't exactly appreciate that, but he could kind of respect it, were it not so goddamn annoying.

Anyhow, it wasn't that bad, just laying there and listening. He didn't look forward to it or anything, but at least he could be grateful that Logan never started crying drunkenly on the other end. Thank God for small favors. Right.

Besides, he knew the guy didn't have a lot of people he could call up, and he _knew_ his own conversational skills had to be like three thousand times better than that retarded Casablancas prick, so he could sort of get it, why Logan kept calling. Weevil's _abuelita_ had always told him – if you could do a kindness for somebody, you should go ahead and do it. She said it was good juju with the Man Upstairs, and, hell, Weevil figured he needed all the help he could get in that department.

::

They never talk about Lilly, not since that one day in detention. Just another way in which they pretended that they kind of got along.

It took a long time for them to get to that point, though, the point where they could even stand to pretend. At first, after that one time, the truth about Lilly had been _everything_ between them. Like, just looking at the guy made it all come rushing back, sharp and bright and ugly resentment, and he knew it had been mutual. Weevil wasn't sure when that had faded – he had a hunch, but he hadn't actually, you know, sat down and analyzed it and shit – but even now they were still real careful to never talk about her.

Maybe they were both afraid of what would happen if they did. Maybe they'd realize they really didn't like each other all that much at all and maybe they shouldn't talk anymore or be semi-sorta-kinda-cool to each other like they were now. Maybe they'd go back to threats and sneers and mutual disdain; maybe it'd bring the ugly sharpness back in full force. Maybe they were afraid they'd finally realize how _fucking weird_ it was that they could even look each other in the eye.

Maybe, if Weevil was the kinda guy to be afraid of anything. Which he wasn't.

  
::

  
There was no point in even looking at the caller ID any more since, barring a freak wrong number, Weevil always knew who it was, this time of night.

"Hey. So. I was wondering. Do you ever get high?"

Weevil just snapped a surly "It's _three a.m._ , man" as a response.

"See, I've been thinking of taking up a new hobby. I considered chain-smoking, but it makes your clothes reek and turns your teeth yellow and, like, makes you die of lung cancer, and that's just too much of a long-term commitment for me, y'know? So I thought you might have better recommendations."

Weevil sighed and resituated himself under his bed covers, got comfortable. This was gonna be a long one, he could tell.

"What, you think 'cause I'm a gangbanger, I'm like the resident expert on drugs or something?"

"Aren't you?"

"Racist _asshole._ " But Logan just laughed softly at him on the other end of the line, and Weevil sighed.

"If you're looking for a hobby, maybe you should consider. I don't know. Something that can't kill you? Macrame or stamp collecting or something. Don't your people have country clubs?"

"Aww."

"Man, fuck your _aww_."

"You're so sweet to worry about me, Eli." Only Logan could make that come out a little vicious.

"I ain't worried about your sorry ass," Weevil said, irritated. "Just, if you become a strung-out junkie, knowing you, you'll be knockin' on my door, expecting me to clean up your messes."

"Nah," Logan said, sounding just the tiniest bit uncertain. "I can clean up my own messes."

And yeah, maybe Weevil laughed a _little_ too hard at that.

  
::

  
In school, the most Logan ever graced him with was a "'Sup, man" murmured in passing, no eye contact, no real assurance that it was even meant for him, but Weevil still knew.

Once Logan had caught his eye in passing, his mouth starting the formation of a greeting. But then Veronica had sidled up behind him, head cocked and the definitive aura of _I-need-something_ all over her. Then all Logan had given Weevil for acknowledgment was a lifted chin and a sidelong glance to Vee, whose eagle eye had caught the whole exchange anyway, making her pause mid-sentence. Weevil suddenly found his locker combination extremely worthy of his concentration, bracing himself for Veronica's inevitable commentary. That was another one who liked to talk. Jesus.

But all Veronica said was, "Innnnnnnnteresting."

"What?" Weevil muttered, feigning distraction.

"Oh, nothing," she sing-songed, expression too innocent to be real. "Want some friendly advice, though? From someone who's been there?"

Weevil fixed her with a bored expression, saying, "I'd say I do, but I have far too much respect for you to lie."

But she ignored him, as per usual: "When you start thinking he needs you to look out for him, no matter what the cost to you? That's when you know you're in way over your head."

He shot back some comment about how when he wanted her advice, he'd rattle her cage, but the whole thing had left a bad taste in his mouth and he spent the rest of the day being cranky and trying to push her words out of his mind.

  
::

  
Whenever Logan called, he never said "Hello" or "how are you" or "I'm sorry for waking your sleeping behind up at four in the morning (again) because I'm drunk and calling you instead of crying into my illegally obtained beer" or anything any normal people would say. Instead, he just said crazy random shit like –

"I'm an innocent man."

Weevil yawned, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and rolled over. "Yeah, man, I heard you the first _fifty thousand times_ you told me."

"Oh, no, no, no. It's official now." Logan gasped on the other end of the line. Drama queen. "Do you not watch the nightly news? You are a very bad citizen, Eli."

"I do not watch the nightly news," Weevil agreed patiently. "What's going down?"

"That lying sack of shit - who should hope and pray I never run into him in a dark alley - otherwise known as 'their witness,' recanted his testimony."

Oh. Oh, that was news. Weevil sat up in bed, alertness flooding into his senses. "Recanted? As in - admitted he was making the whole thing up?"

"Just said he was no longer sure about what he'd seen. I heard Lamb threw a real tantrum. Kinda makes you wish you'd been there, hmm?"

"Are you serious? You're a lucky son of a bitch."

Logan snorted. "Yeah, Lucky's actually my lifelong nickname. Little known fact."

"Well, that lawyer guy sure as hell wasn't gonna get you off."

"Cliff's all right," Logan said, sounding not at all defensive.

"If by 'all right,' you mean 'sucks donkey ass as a lawyer,' then I'm down with that. 'Cause last time I talked to him, he tried to get me to confess to a crime I didn't commit."

"For shame. He thought you were guilty of committing a crime. How could he have ever made such a foolish assumption?"

"Man, forget you _and_ your lousy taste in lawyers."

The amusement in Logan's voice shifted into something harder. "At least I'm consistent. I have lousy taste in _everything._ "

Weevil found he couldn't disagree, so he let that hang there without comment, but if it weren't four in the morning, maybe it'd be worth giving it more thought. Of course, Logan took the silence as an invitation to keep talking, so he added, bitterness dissipating, "Anyway, I thought you'd want to know."

"What, you just found out?"

A guilty pause. "No... I found out this afternoon."

"And you had to wait until four in the morning to tell me, why, again?"

This time it was Logan who didn't answer, and Weevil couldn't help suddenly feeling he'd just asked something off-limits.

"Took them long enough to pull their heads out of their asses," Weevil rushed to add, sounding foolish and awkward.

"Yeah. Yeah. Hey, listen –" Logan said, in a hushed tone Weevil wasn't familiar with. "I never said this, and I thought he was a real asshole when he was alive, but –"

"Huh?"

"I'm sorry. About Felix."

"Hey, it's all good, you didn't –"

"No, I _mean_ ," Logan said carefully, "that I'm sorry that he died. That you lost him. I know you guys were tight. It fucking sucks."

He sniffed, and Weevil had the irrational wish to see his expression just then. It was the most he was ever going to get – the most he'd ever let Logan give – so he thought it over and finally just blurted out, "You're the asshole."

"I'm _an_ asshole," Logan conceded without missing a beat. "I don't know if I'd say I'm _the_ asshole just yet. Now, there's something to aspire to. Maybe in another couple of years..."

"You know what? We know too many fuckin' dead people."

Logan just said, almost like a sigh, "Yeah."

And Weevil almost added, _we're too young for that shit_ , because in the pit of his stomach, he believed that. Because there were ghosts everywhere, around them, between them, dead classmates, and dead mothers, and fathers who were so good-for-nothing that they might as well be dead and dead lovers (the same lover, actually, but they _never_ brought that up) and best friends that you love as much as you can who leave you anyway, leave you with friends who count for nothing and just. He knew guys who had body counts just as high as they did, but none of them were still in _high school_. It wasn't fair, and it was far too much for one person to bear alone, and maybe that was why Logan kept calling and why Weevil kept letting him. So, he almost said, _we're too young, man, we're too young, it isn't fair, this year's been - and we shouldn't have to -_ except that he knew it would've come out ridiculous.

'Sides, Logan would think he was being a douche.

  
::

  
Weevil couldn't help but feel jumpy and paranoid the moment he stepped foot in the courthouse that first day of Aaron Echolls' murder trial. It was all the cops and lawyers and friggin _justic_ going on around him - it made him nervous. Guilty conscience, maybe. That's what happened when somebody like him spends too much time in confession. But he'd known and loved Lilly just as much as anybody, so he had just as much a right to be there as anybody. Even if he did have every intention of sitting in the farthest corner of the most unnoticeable bench possible.

Cliff showed up at the last possible moment, as everyone was already sitting back down in his seat, and the courtroom was so packed that there was no place to sit but next to the lurking hoodrat that probably didn't even really belong there.

"We have to stop meeting like this," Cliff whispered serenely as he slipped into the space beside him and fixed his gaze on the proceedings before them. "People will start to talk." Weevil just ignored him, and wondered if he was going crazy for feeling a little reassured that Cliff was even there.

  
::

  
Weevil liked to think of himself as being so jaded, so seven-steps-ahead-of-everybody, that nothing really took him by surprise any more. But the way that the defense messed with Logan Echolls on the stand - that kinda blindsided him. Everybody knew Aaron was a sick piece of shit anyway, but the way that lawyer put him through the ringer was just kinda evil. Their side had apparently anticipated that Aaron's crappy parenting would come up to bite his case in the ass, so they had just decided to lay it all out on the table, and much to everyone's astonishment, made Logan detail all the different ways his father tortured him as a kid, all the while assuring the judge that, yes, they were going somewhere relevant with this. Incredible. It never ceased to amaze Weevil what levels of drama rich white people were allowed to get away with in the justice system. The _so-called_ justice system.

And then came the clincher.

"Did he ever threaten to kill you?"

Logan's expression stayed neutral, which... probably said a lot about Logan. "Uh, yeah, all the time."

"But he never _actually_ killed you?"

No matter what was going on behind that ugly mug of his, Logan still was able to manage an "Am I seriously supposed to answer a question that retarded?" Out of the corner of his eye, Weevil caught sight of Cliff ducking to hide a small smirk.

After the judge bitched a little, Aaron Echolls' lawyer had turned back to Logan looking way too calm. "Mr. Echolls, can you please tell the court - did you ever witness Aaron Echolls kill, or even try to kill anyone or anything, despite his violent temper, and multiple lifelong threats to do so?"

The worst part was that making Logan talk about the things he would've cheerfully taken to his grave had turned out to be the set up, and that, right there, had been the punchline.

When Logan had finally stepped off the witness stand, lacking his usual bravado, Cliff leaned over to Weevil and muttered, "Poor little orphan Annie. Daddy Warbucks turned out to be Satan."

"Yeah, it's a hard knock life," Weevil muttered back, his gaze fixed on Logan as the other boy slipped out of the courtroom.

"You know, I don't think I like this for an extended metaphor," Cliff said abruptly, sniffing, his hands folded in his lap. "I think it makes me Carol Burnett."

Weevil started to ask how heartless a person had to be to make jokes at a time like this, only – he didn't really think Cliff was heartless (he didn't _have_ to be here today, y'know?) and besides, it was suddenly very clear why Logan got along with this jackass just fine.

  
::

  
For the first time in a really long time, the ringtone of his cell in the middle of the night took him by surprise. It was also the first time Logan hadn't woken him up – not like he could've slept tonight, anyway.

"Hey. Were you there? Today? I thought I saw you, but..."

"Yeah, man." He listened to Logan breathe for a little bit, then he added, "Listen. I don't – you shouldn't – "

"Don't. Whatever you're about to say, it's gonna be the wrong fucking thing," Logan snapped, and Weevil could hear the exhaustion in his voice.

Weevil finally settled on: "You called me to tell me not to say anything?" It came out not unkindly.

"I called to tell you that I'm really drunk."

"That's fucking stunning. Really."

"I'm so drunk, I can't feel my fingers. You ever been drunk like that?"

Weevil smiled a little, despite himself. "Maybe once or twice."

"Maybe once or twice! Me, too."

"Yeah, no, I didn't mean just this week."

Until that moment, Weevil hadn't known laughter could sound quite that desperate. "Did you go to cheer me on?"

"Man, fuck you. I was there for Lilly." They both knew that was a lie, but that was okay. "Is that your plan for tonight? Drink until your liver goes on strike?"

"Hey, everybody already either hates me or wants me dead," Logan offered breezily. "Why should my liver be an exception?"

"Can you hear that? That's the world's smallest violin playing." Weevil's voice was dryer than sand. But he wasn't quite sure what made him add, "Everybody doesn't hate you, you dumbass." He wasn't even that sure it was true. Weevil grasped onto the sudden vivid sensory memory of what it felt like to hate Logan Echolls and pushed it down; that was a lifetime ago, and a lot of shit had gone down since then. Didn't matter anymore.

Logan's voice almost made it to mild when he spoke next.

"So, I've decided something."

"I am on pins and goddamn needles." Words as filler, just 'cause he knew Logan expected him to say _something_.

"If he gets off, I'm gonna track him down and kill him." He didn't need to say who "he" was; they both knew the moment he said it. Weevil's blood ran cold with the calm revelation, but his next words came out reasonable, thoughtful, even: "Then you'd be proving all the haters right. Logan Echolls, cold-blooded killer. Just like his sack of dogshit dad. They'd make shitty TV movies about you. They'd get that fag from _One Tree Hill_ to play you. That would suck dick, man. I'd have to be like – hey I know the guy that the _One Tree Hill_ asshole's playing. So I'd rethink that plan, if I were you."

Logan ignored his attempts at subject-changing, and instead continued, voice devoid of all emotion: "I'm thinking a gun would be too messy, and I might miss or just injure him. And we can't have that, can we? Surviving. It just won't do. I'd like to think I could take him in a fight. There'd be a certain poetic justice to beating the shit out of him. And it might be super cathartic, don't you think?"

"Logan, listen – "

"Maybe I could rig his breaks. Or pay someone to do it for me. Make it look like an accident. I'd pretend to cry at his funeral."

"Sounds like you've given this a lot of thought," Weevil said in the same even tone.

"You're sooooo sexy when you're patronizing."

"Well, what the hell do you want me to say? You want me to say it's okay? Fine. Go kill your old man. You have my blessing. Be sure to say a million Hail Marys afterwards. Happy?"

A long, resentful silence. "Maybe I won't call back anymore."

"Maybe you shouldn't," Weevil retorted, and instantly regretted it.

"...Okay. I guess I'll check ya later -"

"Wait." But Weevil wasn't gabby like Logan was; he floundered for words as the silence grew on the other end. "I got a bottle of vanilla rum my uncle left here last Christmas that I haven't opened yet. You ever had that with vanilla Coke? Good stuff."

"I'm not really all that vanilla," Logan said wryly, the tension draining from his words.

"Well, I ain't gettin' any sleep tonight," Weevil said, stretching and standing. "It's not, you know, _crystal meth_ like you were looking for last week, but you could get out of your tackyass hotel room and help me drink it. Who knows? The fresh air might help you iron out the details for snuffing out the old man."

"You don't think I'd really do it. That I'd kill him." He sounded downright offended.

"I gotta be honest: Hell, no."

"O, ye of little faith. Words can hurt, you know."

"Something tells me you'll get over it. So. We done here? You coming out or what? I ain't got all night, man."

Logan thought this over for so long that Weevil said "Hello?" to make sure his shitty cell hadn't dropped the call again. "Whatever, dude. You know where to find me."

Weevil hung up after he heard the click on the other end, shut his cell phone, still troubled. He'd seen the logic in Logan's calm proposition – Aaron couldn't be allowed to go on vacations and pick out new cars and attend dinner parties and all the other crap that free and clear people do with their time, not while Lilly - _their_ Lilly – was six feet under thanks to him. Not after everything he'd done. Scum like that shouldn't be free to roam around; it threw off the fundamental balance of justice in the universe, if there even was any, which Weevil was pretty sure there wasn't. But - still.

Hell, he didn't think Logan had it in him to kill anybody. That wasn't really the kid's style. But Weevil knew people who'd take care of it... for the right price tag. He shook the thought off – figured they'd cross that bridge when they got to it, if they ever did. He didn't need to be thinking about it just now. He just needed to drive and pour coke and rum and throw out witty zingers and play their game. That was good enough for now. What the hell, you know?

But he'd be damned if he ever told Veronica she'd been right.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for [**The Cheesy Love Song Title Challenge**](http://community.livejournal.com/cheesy_love/); the title is from my assignment ("It Must Have Been Love" by Roxette!) "Words can hurt, you know" is a riff off a similar line from my other favorite show, _House_.


End file.
